Page 48 of Days You Were Mine

Hendrix’s manager found a poem he’d written hours before his death, ‘The Story of Life’. A love song, really, to Monika, which talked of love being a series of hellos and goodbyes. A beautiful poem or a suicide note? No one will ever know.

Jimi Hendrix’s death affected all of us, but with Jake you can tell it’s still raw. He rarely talks about his past and always tries to steer away from anything negative, but right now there’s a surround of sorrow in our tiny little car. I reach out my hand, tanned brown from our summer of sun, and place it on histhigh. He picks it up with one hand and kisses it quickly before returning it to his leg. No words are ever needed.

When we see a sign for a vineyard, Jake pulls off the road. We drive at around five kilometres an hour up a bumpy track riddled with potholes, olive groves on either side, and finally, after a long and jarring five minutes, a farmhouse comes into view, standard Tuscan fare of cream stone walls and a red tiled roof. Behind it the sweep of a vineyard, acres and acres vanishing into the horizon.

An elderly woman comes out to greet us, talking in fast, lyrical Italian that neither of us understands. We stare at each other in confusion.

‘Mangiare?’ she says bringing her fingers to her mouth.

‘Si, signora, grazie,’ Jake answers with the only Italian he knows. He mimes putting a bottle to his lips, head tipped back like a drunk, and she laughs.

‘Ovviamente! Chianti Classico.’

There could be no more perfect place for lunch than this. A little wooden table set up beneath the shade of a sprawling cypress tree. A cheerful blue gingham tablecloth, tumblers filled with red wine, a plate of home-cured salami, a basket of bread and a bowl of the fattest olives I have ever seen. We eat greedily, assuming that this is it, but we are in Italy and we should have known better. Soon we are given bowls of truffle tagliatelle, wide ribbons of pasta that gleam with oil and taste more intoxicating, more sublime than anything I have ever eaten before.

‘Oh my God,’ we say to each other, over and over again.

Jake, with his hamster store of extraneous knowledge, can tell me all about black truffles. The specific breed of dog used to hunt them – Lagotto, he even remembers its name – the wars that break out between locals when one stumbles across another’s secret stash.

‘It’s a bloodthirsty business,’ he says. ‘People die for truffles. You can see why.’

‘Sometimes I think I’ve fallen in love with theEncyclopaedia Britannica. How do you know all this stuff?’

He laughs, then takes hold of my hand.

‘By the way, will you marry me? Any time you like,’ he says. ‘Today, next week, in five years.’

‘Should I answer?’ I say when I manage to speak, and now he smiles, tilting his head as he observes me.

‘I’d have thought so.’

‘Then yes, of course I will. Any time. Today, next week, in five years.’

Siena in August is empty of Italians; just foolish tourists like us braving the heat, spending our days cowering within the thick walls of the Duomo. Not that it’s a hardship to be in this mind-bending building, more opulent, more dramatic than anywhere I have ever seen, in life or textbook. Acres of marble, columns that are striped and preposterously tall, a frescoed ceiling so gilded it is almost blinding. There is an altarpiece with four saints sculpted by a teenage Michelangelo, each one perfection, and I find it hard to take this in, that here in Siena, we casually stumble across Michelangelo.

‘Can we live here one day?’ I ask Jake as we brace ourselves for the burning sun of the piazza.

‘Just what I was thinking,’ he says.

We rent a hot little room above a bar and spend our days seeking out shady restaurants, eating long, indulgent lunches of wild boar pappardelle and a porcini risotto with pecorino cheese that amazes us. It’s hard to sleep at night, so we have afternoon siestas instead, knocked out by our calorific lunches and carafes of red wine, waking thirsty and fuzzy-headed when the skyis turning dark grey. I love the evenings best of all, walking through streets so narrow we must go in single file while on either side tall coloured buildings lean towards each other like lovers. We’ll stop at our favourite café in the square and drink espressos, sometimes with a balloon of grappa.

The sketches I love best come from this time, Jake freer, happier than I’ve ever seen him. While I’m drawing, he’ll scribble lyrics in his little leather notebook or take sips from his coffee or stare up at the sky, searching for the hallmarks of his childhood, stargazing his consolation from those demons he will never share. We are so relaxed with each other in these days that I’m tempted to ask him. What happened? What is it that sometimes makes you so sad? But then I look at him, almost absurdly handsome in his loose black shirt, hair that now reaches his shoulders, and he smiles back at me, raising his brandy in a salute, and I know that I will never do anything to recast him in gloom.

Now

Luke

To tell you the truth, I’m a little bit addicted to my amateur sleuthing. I’m good at it, that’s the thing. I have Alice and Samuel’s timings down to perfection; I know exactly where they will be during my lunch hour. I have a little argument with myself most mornings. Today you will not follow your mother and son, I say as I sit down at my desk. But by midday the craving is upon me. I need the fix of looking, watching, examining; I like to catch the scent of Alice in the air – lemons or cedar or fig, an indefinable yet instantly recognisable perfume that is beginning to drive me mad.

Alice, I discover, is a creature of habit. After Samuel has had his lunch at midday – relentlessly puréed slops, poor sod – she always walks up to the park or the high street, depending on whether or not she’s had a chance to go shopping in the morning. Sometimes they stop off in the library. I haven’t had the nerve to follow them in there. I stand outside the old sandstone building watching its passage of visitors: Clapham mummies wrestling buggies up the steps, pensioners who go to read the papers or perhaps in the hope of a random hello, a shaggy-haired tramp once, who was ejected minutes later.

It’s better when, as today, they head for the shops and I can follow at a distance. I love walking behind Alice; there is muchto glean from the unguarded posterior view. I see that she is happy and relaxed, occasionally I’ll even hear a fragment of a song she is singing – she has a good voice, clear and strong. Mostly I observe how devoted she is to Samuel, talking to him softly if he’s awake, constantly telling him about his surroundings. I can’t hear exactly what she says from this distance, just a muffle of words. Sometimes she stops, sharply swivelling the buggy in front of a shop window, where she’ll point out something of interest. The butcher’s, with its hanging pig carcasses, feels a little indelicate after his lunch of carrot mush.

I was in danger of getting caught once, when they slammed to a halt in front of Arcadia, the gift shop. I stood exposed, terrified of Alice glancing to the left and seeing me, her son, Samuel’s father, loitering with intent. A moment of reckoning, that time.

I tell myself that I am checking in on Alice from time to time, as any other new father would, making sure that the woman who cares for his child is doing a good job.

I’ve been standing at the top of Clapham Manor Street for only five minutes when Alice and Samuel walk right past me. I catch her perfume in the air, sharp, citrusy, a little floral. They might be going to Woolies; Alice goes there a lot. I’ve risked lurking amidst the pick ’n’ mix once or twice just to see her at the back of the shop, examining cake tins and oven gloves that appear in our house later. Another little Alice gift, something useful, thoughtful, transformative – like the corkboard she tacked up to the kitchen wall.

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